PEKKA HASSINEN KAILA PHENOMENON LACUSTRINE PHOTOGRAPHY

The subtitle of one of my exhibitions is "From the vacillating boundary between the elements". This refers to "the near horizon",
the border zone between air and water, which inspires me as a photographer. However, I take photographs in the nature,
not of the nature. For me, nature alone is simply not interesting enough. That is probably why I always design and make
the things which I then photograph.

From the Vacillating Boundary between the Elements...

At first sight it is nothing much - a bent leaf floating on water. And yet its success in
balancing between two elements is like an illustration of the weak physical force said to hold the entire universe
together.

I call it "kaila". As far as I know I'm the only person in the world making these artefacts, which I have created. The kaila is
completely artificial, but only a moment ago the same leaf still grew on its stem, part of nature. Now it is no longer alive, but not yet dead either.
As an entity it is situated somewhere between organic material and the inanimate world, and it could be called a "livject", only a few of
which are known to our culture: a bridal bouquet, a birch whisk, a laurel crown. The kaila combines a curve and a crease, a circle and a pyramid of
emptiness, a bow and a string. The kaila is also of the world of the mind, for it is an aesthetic object and a means for meditation.

The bulrush was the basic motif of one of our oldest visual languages, in ancient Egypt. As I bend a kaila and lay
it on the water, it symbolises both a lack of direction and the remnants of our civilisation's hubris.

Dionysos, God of Bulrush. This work was purchased by Jorvi
Hospital Art Collections of Finland.